The Queensland government has pledged to erect a statue in honour of activist, author and academic Merle Thornton, who died last week.
Dr Thornton and her friend Rosalie Bogner famously chained themselves to a bar at the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in 1965 to protest against a ban on women drinking in public bars.
The protest, which came to be regarded as a seminal moment in Australia’s feminist movement, led to section 59A of the Queensland Liquor Act being repealed five years later.
Dr Thornton, who died at the age of 93 on August 16, also successfully campaigned for the removal of the “marriage bar”, which prevented women from working in the Commonwealth public service after marriage, in 1966.
Premier Steven Miles unveiled the plan to build a statue near the hotel in parliament today.
“The state is poorer for Merle’s passing,” he said.
“Merle championed the rights of women her whole life, well before that iconic protest at the Regatta Hotel that helped lift a ban on women drinking in public bars.
“She was an author, an activist, a screenwriter, a playwright, a director, and so much more.
“If there is any Queensland role model that young women and girls should be able to look up to, it’s Merle.”
Strength and determination
Treasurer Cameron Dick also paid tribute to Dr Thornton, saying the statue would be “a great symbol of a woman who expressed great strength and determination in her life and career”.
“And a great example to all of those young women, and particularly young men, who pass by that point in that future,” he said.
Dr Thornton was appointed as a member of the Order of Australia in 2015 in recognition of her significant service as an advocate for women’s and Indigenous rights and to the arts.
She was also the founder of the first women’s studies course in 1972 at the University of Queensland.
The university said it was the first of its kind in Australia.
Dr Thornton was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university in 2020, when staff gathered at the Regatta Hotel to mark 55 years since the iconic protest.
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